The present invention relates to the field of network browsing software and, in particular, to a data structure and a method of using a client computer to modify at least one record in a database.
In recent years, there has been a tremendous proliferation of computers connected to a global network known as the Internet. A xe2x80x9cclientxe2x80x9d computer connected to the Internet can download digital information from xe2x80x9cWeb sitexe2x80x9d computers connected to the Internet. Client application and operating system software executing on client computers typically accepts commands from a user and obtains data and services by sending requests to Web site applications running on computers connected to the Internet. A number of protocols are used to exchange commands and data between computers connected to the Internet. The protocols include the File Transfer Protocol (FTP), the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP), the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), and other protocols.
The HTTP protocol is used to access data on the World Wide Web, often referred to as xe2x80x9cthe Web.xe2x80x9d The World Wide Web is an information service on the Internet providing documents and links between documents. The World Wide Web is made up of numerous Web sites around the world that maintain and distribute Web documents (i.e. otherwise known as Web pages).
A Web site may use one or more computers that are able to store and distribute documents in one of a number of formats including the Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). An HTML document can contain text, graphics, audio clips, and video clips, as well as metadata or commands providing formatting information. HTML documents also include embedded xe2x80x9clinksxe2x80x9d that reference other data or documents located on the local computer or network computers.
A Web browser is a client application, software component, or operating system utility that communicates with Web site computers via FTP, HTTP, and Gopher protocols. Web browsers receive Web documents from the network and present them to a user. Internet Explorer, available from Microsoft Corporation, of Redmond, Washington, is an example of a popular Web browser.
A Web Data Service (WDS) application is an application that exchanges data between a browser, a Web site and a data source. More particularly, WDS components work together to bring data over the Internet (or a user""s intranet) to be displayed as a Web page in the client""s Web browser. The term data source includes databases and applications generating data (such as monitoring applications). In addition, WDS applications allow updated information to be sent back across the network and merged into the data source, if applicable.
In the past, WDS applications have been used in conjunction with Web browsers for report generation purposes. However, there are problems with using these types of Web reporting schemas (i.e. database system structures). For example, current Web reporting schemas require heavy network transmissions due to the large size of the transmitted data. In addition, current Web reporting schemas are slow due to network factors such as high latency (i.e. the amount of time it takes a packet to travel from a source to a destination) and low bandwidth (i.e. the amount of data that can be transmitted in a fixed amount of time). Further, current Web reporting schemas require a continuing dialog between clients and Web sites in order to define and generate a report. Furthermore, current Web reporting schemas frequently dependent on proprietary components on the client and/or on the Web site. Some examples of current WDS implementations are: Remote Data Services from Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Washington and Level/5 Quest from Level/5 Research of Melbourne, Fl.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an improved method of allowing a client to update at least one record in a remote data source.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide an encapsulated data structure that can be sent as a single transmission from a client to a server in order to update a data source.
The method of the present invention allows users to modify at least one record in a data source, typically a database. A client displays a plurality of database elements in a Web browser. A user utilizes the Web browser in order to modify one or more of the database elements. After the user has finished modifying the database elements, the modified elements are encapsulated into a data structure. The data structure is then transmitted from the client to the server. The data structure is used to update the appropriate elements in the database.
The data structure of the present invention is stored on a computer-readable medium. The data structure includes a first field that identifies at least one record in the database to be updated. The data structure also includes a second field containing updated data that is to be stored in the database record. As previously mentioned, the data structure is typically used to update modified elements in a database.